THANKSGIVING

It's a new day
Children are born
And leaves continue to fall

As I reap my harvest
I am less aware of the fruits I don't have
And more aware of the roots that provide

My harvest may be small
But I have a reason to rise each day
Work to do and lives to touch

And while I may never have a family of my own
I've lost enough leaves to be grateful
For those I have left

CONSUMMATION

I am fairly contented with life

Sometimes the longer you live without
a husband, and children, a home
the more you realize you really don't need them
to be happy, alive, fulfilled

My First Love has always been there
and the longer we are together
the more I am made complete

Yet sometimes the memory of other loves
creeps in and punctures the moment
with their words, their gaze, their lips
and the only regret I have
is that they have been granted the power to interrupt
the consummate love no others can match

EDMUND POWER FLYNN, JR.

I'm having a moment
where I remember
that my grandfather
was once a teacher too

I see him in my mind's eye
in a bowler hat
and 19th century mustache
standing with his students
in front of the schoolhouse
in Arichat

And then I am overwhelmed
by the wish
to touch him
to see him in the flesh
to feel his soft hands on my face
and know him in person
for he died in 1949
at the age of 80
nearly thirty years before I was born

and now all that remains
is a stony grave
and six feet of dirt
while not impenetrable
will not give up
the pulsing Irish flesh
I desire to behold
and embrace

ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER

I must have watched that segment from Eat, Pray, Love a dozen times
you know the one that takes place in Italy?
I haven't yet been to Rome, but I have savored other cities
and trodden other cobblestones in Paris, Brussels, Galway, London

have baguette, will travel: under the arm or in a basket
oh, the cheese and bread and chocolate in Paris
a city summed up in three food groups

you've never had a Belgian waffle until you've been tempted
to succumb to the smell of the street waffles in Flanders

the winding roads of Ireland
with their sodden pavement and wet sheep
require warming with ales and making stout with fish and chips

I could eat scones with butter and clotted cream and lemon curd
with Earl Grey Tea until I sunk to the bottom of the Thames
and my eyes would never tire of the golden glow inside St. Paul's

and even if I were wealthy enough
to see all the cities of the world before I die
there will come a time when my traveling days will cease
when I am too old or too sick to tour
but who says my Passport will ever be too full
or my wanderlust interrupted?

no matter where I make my home
I will always be homesick for those places that I have loved
and in my mind I will go back
and the Passport of my heart will be stamped
again and again and again

1999

I lay on the ground
atop a cascade of autumn leaves
discarded by the trees as if for my benefit

I was fully grown and greened
hardly thinking I would be
as the oak that had lost her colors
even less the rotten trunk
with no leaves left to drop

Is that what it means to be young?
Must a youth think naught
of age and mortality
or worse, fear it?

Is the only promise found
in yards and yards of slack
or are there still knots to cling to
in the last foot of rope?